The Forest Service’s New Campaign: Nature Connects Us

One of the problems with the Forest Service (and BLM) is their lack of self-aggrandizement.  For thousands of years, humility has been considered to be a virtue.  And yet, certain situations do not call for it.  For example, some of my women colleagues used to ask me to review their job applications and the convos sometimes went like this:

Sharon: didn’t you lead the team that accomplished x, y and z?

Applicant: well, yes, but the team really did it..

When folks review applications, humble applicants are at a disadvantage. If we don’t know the applicant, we don’t know the difference between understatement, overstatement and plain old making stuff up and hoping no one notices.

Writer: Forest Service, don’t you do amazing things? Tell us about them.

FS: Well, we work with Tribes, States and partners and jointly…

I’m not blaming public affairs folks here. I’m not blaming NFF.  I’m thinking it’s some sort of systemic cultural issue, and interested in others’ ideas.

The Park Service has Ken Burns documentaries, ads for corporations that invoke Parkiness, and generalized organizational hagiography.  In contrast, the Forest Service and BLM have bupkis.  Even when the Forest Service did a partnership with Subaru Forester (does anyone else remember that Lamar Beasley effort?) it didn’t work out.   I can’t remember the details but someone here does.

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Yes, the Forest Service has had a campaigns,perhaps the most notable and successful was our own Smokey Bear.  More recently we had the “It’s All Yours” campaign. According to my info, it was started by a few hardy and imaginative FS, NFF and Vail Resorts folks in 2015.  The way I heard it, one of the points was to highlight the fact to the world that they were skiing and watching skiing on, not Vail’s land, but National Forests.

The National Forest Foundation, the White River National Forest and Vail Resorts have partnered to present the “It’s All Yours” Public Service campaign during the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships (FIS 2015). Launching in February, the “It’s All Yours” campaign is aimed at building awareness about recreation opportunities on National Forests and Grasslands and encouraging responsible recreation and stewardship of National Forests.

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Launching in February, the “It’s All Yours” campaign is aimed at building awareness about recreation opportunities on National Forests and Grasslands and encouraging responsible recreation and stewardship of National Forests.

The year-long partner campaign will debut several Public Service Announcements and be bolstered by various informational resources available at www.itsallyours.us. The campaign will also unveil two unique gondola wraps or “mobile ranger stations” during the event where visitors can enjoy the ride while talking to Snow Rangers about skiing and snowboarding on national forests and how to become stewards of their forest lands. As a token of our appreciation, visitors who ride the gondola and speak with our Rangers will be given commemorative FIS 2015 Forest Service pins.

As I sit here today, I have National Grassland and National Forest “It’s All Yours” stickers on my monitor stand.  It was a popular campaign, as far as I know, and had great swag.

So the Forest Service wanted to update the campaign, due to concerns that National Forests are not really “ours” based on input from Tribes. This is absolutely true, but absolute truth is not campaign-y.  Suppose we had a Park campaign  “America’s Best Idea- Except for That ‘Taking It From the Native Americans” Thing.”

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Sidenote: it’s interesting that Larry Kurtz, Jim Petersen of Evergreen and I all agree that giving BLM and FS back to Tribes should be considered.  This was in Petersen’s NWFP post.

Suffice it to say I fervently wish the Forest Service and the BLM could manage the public’s federally-owned forests and rangelands with as much foresight and wisdom as tribes but their plans only span 10 years and both agencies are constantly embroiled in political turmoil and litigation.

More than 20 years ago I said publicly that I thought the time had come for the federal government to return all of the forest and rangeland it stole from Indians in the 1800s to their respective tribes.

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Which leads us to the new Forest Service campaign, ” Nature Connects Us.”

Development of this campaign started in fall 2021 when National Forest Foundation and the Forest Service began the process of re-envisioning and evolving the “It’s All Yours” campaign by engaging with Ascent Inclusion Consulting (a group specializing in diversity, equity and inclusion). Since the initial launch of the It’s All Yours campaign, we have learned that to truly live out our code and commitments of investing in relationships, empowering one another and learning from mistakes, we need to create and hold space for respectful, inclusive, responsive and caring conversations and relationships.

Listening sessions with tribes and underserved communities in 2021 helped our agency further understand the inequities inherent in previous conservation engagement and cultural norms that continue to affect how we design and deliver our mission.

Through discovery and learning, we developed a more equitable, relatable, humbly toned campaign that leads with inquiry and initiates conversations with viewers that will hopefully widen their shared connections to public lands and invigorate their relationships to national forests and grasslands.

Questions range from “What can you learn from nature?” to “How do you care for nature?” to “How does nature connect you to others?” All are important reflections, given our duty to “Caring for the land and serving people.”

You’ll also note the creative elements of this campaign are centered on circles—a deliberate way to illustratively show everything is connected—with special emphasis on culturally significant animals like the buffalo and eagle.”

When we know more, we do more. The initiation of this campaign is a milestone in the drumbeat of discussions surrounding inclusivity and elevating tribal voices across the nation.

There is more to do—let’s do it together! Nature connects us all. Visit www.natureconnectsus.org to learn more about the campaign.

This work starts with us, so after you visit the site, find ways to incorporate this campaign into your work, engage with your existing public and connect to new audiences.

Here’s what NFF says:

The Nature Connects Us outreach campaign was developed with the intent to awaken and strengthen all people’s connection to National Forests and Grasslands through a relatable and inspirational campaign grounded in honoring ancestral Tribal homelands through respectful and mindful visitor experiences.

Anchored in the USDA’s core values and centered on equity, this campaign was created in coordination with the National Forest Foundation and is designed to help all peoples and communities realize the physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, and economic benefits provided by the National Forest System.

The campaign includes actions that target high-impact agency systems, processes, and practices to remove systemic barriers and increase opportunities for equity in local communities.

I appreciate the need to include Tribal voices. I also appreciate that a humble approach may be culturally a Tribal value.  Still, when I was fortunate to sit in on a webinar about it, I had some concerns.  Again, folks have the best intentions, but it can translate into work for the overworked, which can create ignoring (most likely) or resentment.   To outsiders it looks like devoting scarce resources to talking and strategizing and planning. And is the campaign the right place to “target systems and processes and increase equity in local communities?”  Or should the employees who run the systems processes and practices, and work in local communities (to whom we have entrusted everything else) be able to figure that out on their own. Did Districts ask “hey we need help in increasing equity in our communities, can you give us some help?”

Anyway, here are some of my thoughts:

1. Nature Connects Us could be a campaign for EPA or USGS or NMFS or.. again, sometimes the FS is so humble, it’s invisible.

2. Investing in relationships, learning from one another, discovery and learning and initiating conversations or asking people to tell their stories…as described in the webinar sounded like another vague thing for field folks to do.  If, in fact, it weren’t seeking to address Tribal concerns, we might be more critical. But then a person could wonder “did they ask Tribes if they would prefer actions to words?” It’s not that having conversations does not have value, but what are the trade-offs? How much funding, how much time?  Is it just assigning more work to overworked field individuals?

3.  Funding  “having conversations” “holding space” and “listening to stories” generically (this is fairly generic), may not resonate with the taxpayers.  Fortunately it is a project of NFF and the FS; but perhaps the FS funded NFF?  Personally, I think more trust with communities is built by their seeing actions, and the FS saying what it is going to do and doing it, versus hosting more conversations.  Traditionally, activities are directed toward some measurable goals.  Maybe that’s passe, in today’s public administration.

4. If someone came up to me and asked me to tell my story of how I feel about nature, I would ask “why?”.  If it were an FS employee on the clock, I’d ask “in whose PD is listening to stories about Nature?”. In our webinar it was suggested that FS employees engage people in a grocery store, which sounds off the clock.  Most employees I don’t think would be too cheerful about doing something as a volunteer that upper level folks want them to do, unless they also want to do it.  In fact,  NFFE might have something to say about pressure to volunteer. Meanwhile, the FS is asking people to do two or three jobs because they can’t hire anyone.

Again, I don’t want to be hard on these folks, who had very good intentions and want to be virtuous (humble). Tribes deserve much more than they are receiving, in my view, that would be at least co-management in most places. At the same time, actions speak louder than words. Again I don’t blame the FS, replacing doing with talking, exhorting, and judging seems to be part of the current Zeitgeist.

While humility is a great personal virtue, I’m not sure that choosing to be an organizational minnow in a pool of sharks is an effective long-term strategy.  I also see growing layers of ideas, plans and strategies that may seen unnecessary (like the NOGA) and place more burdens on the field-level people doing the work that communities and visitors call for and see, and that Congress funded.

Given all that,  I do like the T-shirts with the bison and National Forests and Grasslands.